


So What If I Woke Up in Another World, I'm the Summoner!

by Ashannah



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Novelization, POV First Person, Retelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-11-09 09:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashannah/pseuds/Ashannah
Summary: A retelling of Fire Emblem Heroes as a novel from the point of view of Kiran.When Kiran wakes up in another world with a gun pointed at their face, they aren't quite sure what to make of it, especially because they don't remember anything from before this moment. Thrust into the position as the Order of Heroes' one and only summoner, Kiran has to contend with an encroaching evil empire and unraveling their own mysterious past before it's too late.





	1. [OLD] 1. I Summon Thee!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Ashannah here. You may be wondering why I have some chapters labeled 'old' and others labeled 'new'. It's because I'm revamping this project by re-editing and re-writing these early chapters in order to create a more cohesive base for the fic going forward. The rewritten first chapter (the '[NEW] I Summon Thee') is largely the same as the original, as it was the most polished of the three that I previously wrote, however, I have added on to it in order to help with pacing. The next two chapters will diverge heavily from their original forms. In the meantime, I hope that you enjoy 'So What If I Woke Up In Another World, I'm the Summoner'!

When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring down the wrong end of a gun.  
But it wasn’t like any gun I’d ever seen. For one, it was huge. An absolute unit. I’ve seen dictionary-thesaurus combos smaller than this thing. And second of all, this sucker was solid gold, with an ivory handle to boot. I mean, it was a cool looking gun, I’ll give it that much. Super intricate designs laced up and down the barrel and it glimmered in the sun so brightly it had its own halo. And, best of all, I had a clear view from the muzzle all the way down to the back of the barrel. And, get this, at the very end of the inside of that barrel was a void.  
Because, of course this gun would have its own personal black hole hanging out inside it. It was this black so deep, so dark that my eyes hurt just looking at it. And it was really hard not to look at. The longer it forced my poor human eyes to gaze into its depths, the more my brain thought that it was seeing stars within it. As if there were galaxies floating around, the lights of their stars flickering in and out, the gases of the universes colliding in pinks and purples and blues and some ungodly colors that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. All of it was burned into my brain.  
Now, you’re probably wondering ‘gee, if the gun is in your face, somebody has to be holding it there’, right? Right?  
You’re absolutely right!  
Behind this beast of a gun was a woman.  
Her shiny, curly, bright red hair was pulled up into a high ponytail. She was wearing what I could only guess was some kind of uniform—a stunning white tunic embroidered with gold at the edges laid over golden plate mail and a thick brown skirt. A pauldron shaped like a wing wrapped around her head from one shoulder to another. White feathers speckled with grey poked out of the pauldron out of the shoulder. She stood stiff, like she was still buckling from the recoil, her arms locked out in front of her. Her hands shook. Her eyes were pinched shut.  
The gun wobbled precariously in front of my face. I didn’t blame her. The thing looked like it weighed a good twenty pounds, minimum. A soft grey fog filled the air around us, pouring out of the muzzle of the gun. It seemed to glisten in the sunlight.  
As the fog cleared, it revealed that there was a particularly large and equally ornate axe stuck into the ground at her side.  
Perfect. She had a gun and an axe.  
I wasn’t liking my chances here.  
Suddenly, her eyes flashed open. Her eyes were a startling green.  
“It… worked?” She asked, ogling at the gun. “It worked!”  
She yanked the gun out of my face only to immediately turn it towards her own. She peered perilously down the barrel, holding it almost directly up to her one eye. I was uncomfortable just looking at her. It was safe to assume that no one had taught her gun safety.  
Scared to move, and without turning my head, I glanced around. We were in some kind of field, smack in the middle of a forest. The wild grass was tall, tickling my elbows. I guessed that if I actually put some effort in and dashed at the woods behind the woman, I might actually have something resembling a thirty percent chance of not getting axed on the first step forward. Or, you know, shot down by her actual hand-cannon.  
But, even if I ran, what good would that do? I had no idea where I was. I couldn’t even remember where I’d been before this. Or who I was before this. I could remember my name, but everything else was blank. Even so, I knew that I was very, very far from home.  
In other words, I was stuck between a woman with a gun and an axe and a hard place.  
I flinched. Every inch of my body burned with this residual ache, like I’d been ripped limb-from-limb and then put back together. Badly. With Elmer’s glue. My head was spinning. The sun burned my eyes.  
And it wasn’t because it was reflecting off of the most gold I’d (probably) ever seen in my life, either.  
“Where am I?” I choked out. My voice was barely a croak and it sounded (and felt) like I hadn’t spoken in a long, long time.  
The redhead pulled her face out of the gun, startled. I let out a deep, internal, sigh of relief.  
“I’m Anna, the current commander of the Order of Heroes—” She swept her arms out wide and spun in a circle. “And you’re in Askr. You must be the summoner I’ve read so much about!”  
I wracked my brain. Askr? What’s an Askr?  
“… You know, I was seriously hoping that the summoner would have some kind of basic knowledge about our world, but I’m guessing by that baffled look on your face that you have no idea what I’m talking about.”  
“Absolutely not,” I said.  
She let out a groan and put her head in her hands. “By the gods, what a mess.”  
“I’m sorry?” I said. And I genuinely meant it, despite my confusion. She had this downright beaten look on her face, like someone had just punted her puppy all the way across a football field.  
“No, it’s not your fault. It’s just that this wasn’t listed in the manual. At all,” she sighed. “The foretold summoner, brought to this world by ritual, doesn’t even know what’s going on.”  
“I’m not sure about any of what you’re talking about, really. I’m not some kind of summoner, I’m just… Kiran.”  
“Well, ‘Just Kiran’, I guess we’ve got a lot of catching up to do—hey, get down!”  
Before I could even process what she’d just said, her hand snapped out, grabbed me by the shoulder, and threw me to the ground behind her. She tossed me the gun and with a flourish, whipped the axe out of the ground and parried the blow that was meant for my head.  
A man in battered black armor had appeared from the grass, brandishing a small hatchet. However, what it lacked in size it made up for in the sheer sharpness of its blade. It could’ve taken my head clean off my shoulders.  
I sighed. Of course. Just my luck. Of course I’d get dragged into another world only to get killed five minutes in.  
However, it seemed like if Anna had any kind of say in it, I wouldn’t be dying quite yet.  
Anna glanced over her shoulder at me with a wink. “Just leave this to me, okay?”  
“Okay,” I wheezed.  
She shrugged a burlap bag off her shoulder and it landed at my feet. A strange glowing ball rolled out.  
Anna darted forward.  
The soldier braced himself, clutching his axe.  
Anna was too fast for him.  
She feinted to the left, then spun on her heel and swung her axe in a wide arc down at his head. He barely blocked the blow. The handle of his hatchet snapped in half like it was made of chalk.  
The soldier stumbled back. He clutched at the end of the hatchet with the head still attached. With the helmet hanging low on his face, I couldn’t see the look in his eyes, but his expression was almost… blank. Like he didn’t feel a thing at all.  
As he was fumbling backwards, Anna swung her foot out, caught his leg, and yanked his weight out from underneath him.  
He hit the ground with a heavy thud.  
Before he could even roll over, Anna raised the axe high above her head.  
I looked on, both not understanding what I was looking at, and yet, knowing exactly what was about to happen next. I was horrified, petrified, stupefied. I was hypnotized by the glint of her axe in the sun. The grace with which she held herself, the sleek and painfully sharp edge of her blade—my breath was caught in my throat.  
And with a quick swing, she brought the axe down.  
The blade sliced through his armor like it wasn’t even there. There was a flash of blood through the air. It splattered onto her white uniform, speckling it with bright red.  
As the man drew one last rattling breath, Anna stood over him. The broken hatchet laid at her feet. A shadow hung over her face. I couldn’t get a read on her expression.  
“See?” Anna asked. She turned back to look at me with a smile. “Nothing to worry about.”  
There were spots of blood on her cheek.  
“Y-yeah,” I stammered.  
I wasn’t sure how I felt about what I just saw. My stomach was trying to do backflips up my throat and out my mouth. But I did know one thing.  
I was very happy that Anna was not my enemy.  
She swung the axe over her shoulder and sauntered back over to me. She held out her hand to me. I took it and without even a hint of effort, she pulled me to my feet.  
In that moment, I realized just how tall she was. I felt so small next to her, she was almost a whole head taller than me, but I got the feeling that this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for me.  
She looked me up and down and let out yet another deep sigh.  
“So, summoner, let me fill you in on what you’re missing. Follow me.”


	2. [OLD] 2. Prince With Golden Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kiran reveals that they know absolutely nothing about anything and meets Alfonse.

Anna hurried me down a path through the forest.  
I had a hard time keeping up. Anna’s legs were long… mine were not. And it was obvious that I wasn’t an athlete in my previous life either. I stumbled along in her wake. Sweat was dripping in a steady stream down my face and I wheezed and wheezed and wheezed with every step I took.  
Anna scanned the trees around us with this deep intensity in her eyes, watching everything, hearing everything. Just looking at her was enough to make me feel paranoid. I stepped on a twig and the snap of it beneath my feet was enough to help my soul leave my body for a few seconds.  
By the time we made it to the end, I was almost wishing that the axe man had just ended me then and there in the field. From where we’d stopped, all that stood between us and the outside world was a stone arch leading to a plain. I doubled over, clutching my knees.  
“Are you okay?” Anna asked. She was looking me up and down with one hand reached out, like she wanted to help but had no idea what to do.  
“Perfect. Never been better.” I gave her a wobbly thumbs up.  
Wait. Thumbs up? I hoped that it meant the same thing here as it did, well, wherever the hell I came from.  
Thankfully, Anna didn’t look confused or offended. She did frown a bit, obviously doubting my declaration of perfection, but she didn’t push me. I sighed internally. If she’d probed me a bit further, I might’ve actually cried from exhaustion.  
“Well,” she said. “Beyond this arch lies Castle Askr. It’s home to the royal family, but it also doubles as headquarters for the Order of Heroes.”  
“So, is this where I’ll be staying while I’m here?” I asked.  
“Yes. The Order has a large dormitory styled barracks. It can house around two hundred heroes; however, it isn’t in use at the moment. You’ll get your own room and I’ll arrange for a study to be created for you.”  
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not sure if that’s necessary. You don’t need to waste any resources for my sake,” I said.  
“Kiran,” Anna tisk-tisk-tisked me. “You’re going to need it. The summoner has an important role to play, and I don’t think you’ll want to be working where you’re sleeping.”  
I tried to ignore the part where she said ‘work’.  
“Let’s get going, shall we?” Anna asked.  
I nodded and followed her through the arch. Breaking through the trees, I was greeted by the sight of a massive castle, sprawling out just as much as it was tall, surrounded by a wall and a moat. Built from pale grey stone, it’s nine glittering spires reached up to claw the sky. Royal blue banners emblazoned with a yellow shield flew freely from the guard towers. In the center of it all was the main gate. The drawbridge had been left down, but it’s wrought iron gate was shut. The more I looked at it, the more I thought that I must’ve hit my head and entered some kind of imaginary fairytale land.  
I pinched the back of my hand and it hurt. This was real, right?  
Anna guided me towards the gate and with a curt nod to the guard at the station above, it opened up for us. From there, she quickly shuffled me through the courtyards and into a large cathedral-like building off to the side of the castle proper. Slamming the door behind her, she let out a soul-heaving sigh.  
“What was that for?” I asked.  
“I’m just happy no one paid attention to us,” she said. “The fewer who know you’re here right now, the better. Spies have eyes in unlikely places. I just think it’d be more proper to help you get settled before a target gets slapped on your back.”  
I balked.  
“Don’t look so worried. You’re safe here… for the most part,” Anna said. She clapped her hands together. “I’ve got some questions for you as we walk, if that’s alright with you?”  
I got the feeling that ‘yes’ was the only acceptable answer here.  
“So, what is this place?” I asked.  
It looked like some kind of massive cathedral entirely made from dull grey stone. Everywhere you turned your head, the floor, the pillars, the walls—absolutely everything was made of the same grey stone. Craning my head back to gawk at the the ceiling revealed that too was made of stone. The only decoration in it was a large stained-glass window at the end of the hall and the sigil of a shield carved into the center of the floor.  
I’d make a joke about how the designer was clearly stuck in the stone ages, but that’d just be corny.  
Wait, stone age? Did that count as a memory? Or just common knowledge?  
“The Order of Heroes’ headquarters,” Anna said. “We’re in the main entry right now. To your left is a passageway that will take you to the barracks. The hall to your left, however, will lead you to the training tower, the library, and the storehouses. If you keep following it, you’ll eventually be able to reach the main part of the castle, but the entrance to it is pretty well guarded.”  
“It’s pretty empty in here,” I noted.  
‘Pretty empty’ was me being polite. It was absolutely empty. Zero signs of life filled these halls, no talking, no footsteps, nothing.  
“The Order of Heroes has been a… ceremonial guard for a long time. Our ranks are made up of otherworldly heroes, but without someone to summon said heroes, well, we tend to fall short on recruits.”  
“So you’re telling me that you’re the only member of the Order of Heroes?” I asked.  
“No,” she huffed. “Alfonse and Sharena are also part of it. And now, you are too, so that makes four total! I’d like to say there’s five of us, but Zacharias has been missing for some time now…”  
In the distance, an owl hooted. It sounded indignant. I spotted it sitting on a rickety wooden perch at the end of the main hall, its downy white feathers fluffed up with annoyance.  
“Shut up, Feh, you’re an owl, you don’t count” Anna called. “You get to stick around because you bring us letters from the king and gifts from the queen.”  
Feh hooted, annoyed, and flew off. Dust filled the air wherever she flapped her wings.  
“Yeah, you too,” Anna called after her.  
I glanced over at Anna. She didn’t seem concerned in the least that she’d just had a conversation with an owl.  
“All right, Kiran. Let’s go to the library. Alfonse is usually there or the training grounds, so we’ll start there first. Follow me!” Anna said.  
“O-of course,” I said.  
“So, tell me about yourself. Where are you from?” She asked.  
“I don’t know.”  
She chuckled awkwardly. “That’s… okay? How old are you anyway? You’re so small!”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Really? You don’t know your own birthday?”  
“Nope.”  
She tried to keep the concerned frown off her face. She failed. “What’s your family like? What are their names?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Do you know the name of the world you came from?”  
“Nope.”  
“You don’t seem bothered by not knowing anything about yourself, Kiran,” she said.  
“I can’t be bothered by something I don’t know,” I said, shrugging.  
“Oh… okay, then.”  
“Is that weird?” I asked.  
“Just a little.”  
The look on her face said something much more like ‘just a whole freaking lot’. I got the feeling I should’ve felt self-conscious about it, but it really didn’t bug me. What’s the use in worrying about something out of my control? Especially when I was already trying to figure out the world I’d just woken up in? I’d rather worry about something more important.  
For example, this whole summoner business. Sure, I could choose to have an identity crisis when I’ve only been awake for a grand total of two hours, or I could choose to have a crisis over the already sky-high expectations for me when I’ve only been awake for a grand total of two hours.  
I could feel that internal crisis start to peak when we paused in front of a pair of absolutely giant doors. They were probably two stories tall and made of solid wood and decorated with intricate wrought-iron vines. Why was everything so freaking big here, anyway? Guns, castles, and now doors of all things? Was this Alfonse character going to be some kind of literal giant?  
I looked up at Anna. As far as I was concerned, her height solidly put her in the ‘giant’ category.  
Anna pushed the doors open and stepped in.  
I was greeted by normal-people sized books and normal-people sized bookshelves with ladders. The shelves were split into two long aisles with a walkway in the middle that led directly to a grand desk that, too, was covered with books and piled high with papers, all of which was neatly organized. I actually sighed in relief. Anna gave me a look out of the corner of her eye and made her way in.  
“Alfonse?” she called.  
“Here, Anna,” a muffled voice replied.  
We glanced around but the source of the voice was nowhere to be seen.  
“Let’s split up,” Anna said. “You take the right, I’ll take the left.”  
Without waiting for a response, she started pacing up and down the bookshelves on the left side of the walkway.  
“… Okay, I guess.”  
I tentatively approached the bookshelves. Not really sure why. Something in me was telling me to take it slowly. While Anna zipped up and down and around the bookshelves, I noticed a pile of books towards the outer wall of the room.  
While there were piles of books stacked neatly around the bookshelves and in other random spots around the library, there was a large pile that wasn’t as neat as the others. I looked up and noticed the top part of the shelf it was in front of was missing most of its books. The ones that remained looked like they’d been roughed up or fallen over. Beside the pile was a ladder that had clearly fallen off of its rail.  
I crouched down and started to pick the books up, setting them neatly in piles like the ones around me. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.  
A young man that I could only assume was Alfonse was hidden under the pile books. His dark blue hair was braided around the back of his head, the tips dyed gold. From the looks of him, I guessed that we might’ve been around the same age, based off of the reflection I'd seen of myself in a window. He wore a uniform similar to Anna’s with the same golden wing pauldron that wrapped around the back of his head. His face was scrunched up in pain.  
“Thank God you aren’t a giant too,” I blurted out.  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, baffled. “Who are you?”  
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said quickly. “Hey, Anna, I think I found him!”  
She was there in an instant. I almost had a heart attack. One second I was sitting around with a bookshelf-attack victim, the next I had Anna, wielder of giant weapons standing above me.  
“What happened to you?” Anna asked.  
“I fell,” he said. “I tried taking too many books at once and I lost my balance.”  
“Well, get up then. I have to introduce you to someone important,” she said.  
He grimaced. “Anna, I just fell from ten feet up and landed on top of a pile of books. And then when I thought it was over, more books fall on top of me.”  
“So?”  
“I think I need a moment to, you know, not move.”  
“It’s important, Alfonse.”  
“More important than my search to find Zacharias?”  
I waved. It was so awkward butting in that it was painful. “Hi, I’m the summoner. You don’t need to get up for me or anything. Take your time, that must’ve hurt.”  
Alfonse flew to his feet.  
“You summoned the summoner without me?” he demanded.  
“I didn’t want to bother you,” Anna said. “I know you want to dedicate your time to research, so I just went and did it myself.”  
“Does Sharena know?” he asked.  
“I was hoping you’d know where she went. We’ll tell her next, together,” Anna said.  
“Anna, I…” Alfonse trailed off. His face went through a flurry of emotions. After a moment, he turned to me. “You, summoner. What’s your name?”  
“I’m Kiran,” I said.  
“Kiran is absolutely clueless,” Anna said, arms crossed.  
“Anna is absolutely right,” I agreed.  
Alfonse looked completely deflated, and not because he’d been crushed under a pile of books so thick War and Peace would weep with jealousy.  
“Hey, think of it this way,” Anna said. “With the summoner at our side, we can end this war with Embla faster. That’ll help us put more time into searching for Zacharias.”  
Alfonse’s face brightened a bit. “You’re right. Thanks, Anna.”  
I was happy to see him feeling happier. Don’t get my words twisted at all. However, there was a little kink in their plan. I didn’t exactly, well, agree to any of this at all. I’m brought to another world by a woman with a gun and dragged around from place to place, being told this that and the other, and volunteered for a war I never knew existed or even asked to join.  
This whole scenario felt like something I almost recognized. There’s a word for it, I was one-hundred-and-ten percent sure. But, good God, what was it?  
“So, what now?” I asked.  
At this point I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Anna and Alfonse or just thinking aloud.  
“That’s easy,” Alfonse said. “We find Sharena and prepare for you to perform your first summon.”


	3. [OLD] 3. Proof of Power

Alfonse went to ring the tower bell.  
In the meantime, I sat with Anna and she split a sandwich from her pack with me.  
“What are those things in your bag, anyway?” I asked.  
“Oh, this?” She pulled out a strange glowing ball. “These are orbs. We use them to bring forth heroes from other worlds. When you put one in Breidablik and pull the trigger, it will release the hero within. The only problem is, well, we can’t predict what world any of the orbs hold, or what hero will be released from it. It’s a total gamble.”  
I perked up. “So, can I try it now?”  
“Absolutely not. We have to find Sharena first.”  
I pouted.  
“Kiran, this will be the first time we’ve summoned heroes from other worlds to our side in generations. This is a very sacred ritual! Doing it without a member of the royal family present wouldn’t just be wrong, it might as well be treason!”  
I choked on my sandwich. “What?”  
“Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little about treason. But I’m serious! It would be seriously disrespectful to have Alfonse present but not Sharena.”  
“Royalty?” I asked, still fighting with the sandwich stuck in my throat.  
“Alfonse and Sharena are the royal heirs to the kingdom of Askr. Didn’t I tell you that?”  
“No,” I gagged.  
“Oh.” Anna shifted in her seat. “Maybe I forgot to mention that.”  
The bell rung out from somewhere above our heads.  
“Why would the royal heirs be part of a defunct ceremonial guard?” I asked.  
“We aren’t defunct,” Anna grumbled, gnawing on her sandwich. “Alfonse wants to become a great soldier, but the king is opposed to him joining the royal army. Too dangerous, he says. So, to spite him, Alfonse joined the Order of Heroes and Sharena thought it would be fun to tag along.”  
“How would it be to spite him if it doesn’t even do anything?” I asked.  
Anna gave me a sharp look. “It’s not like we don’t do anything. I can lead a battalion into battle just as well as any other commander in the Askran forces. And, not to brag, I do a better job of it than most others, too. In fact, we’ve been working aside the main army for some time now, since Embla has become openly hostile.”  
“That sounds like another long story,” I said.  
“It is,” Anna said. “You see, Askr and Embla have been enemies for generations and we’ve been waging war on-and-off for centuries. For the past two decades, Embla has followed a ceasefire arrangement with us. At least the old king had the decency to attack us under the table by bribing politicians to bribe mercenaries and thieves to attack our villages, but now, Princess Veronica—"  
Alfonse rushed up to us. “Is Sharena here yet?”  
“Not yet. When was the last time you saw her, anyway?” Anna asked.  
“This morning. She said she was heading out to the fields to the north of the castle to pick wildflowers, I haven’t seen her since.”  
“There was an Emblian soldier that attacked us when Anna summoned me, do you think she’s in danger?” I asked.  
“There are Emblians this close to the castle?” Alfonse snapped.  
Anna looked at him, steadfast. “I had the summoner to deal with first. Getting Kiran to safety was the priority.”  
“I was in danger?” I asked.  
“Yes, but I was there to take care of it. Had the situation gotten out of hand, I would’ve dealt with it, just like with the one you saw in the field. He was just a warm-up.”  
I felt my skin freeze over.  
“So, what are we dealing with, Anna?” Alfonse asked.  
“A small reconnaissance troop. The one I took down was wearing the sigil of the Emblian spy corp. Based on past experiences, there’s probably three more out there.”  
Alfonse bit his lip, deep in thought.  
“We’ll leave now and find Sharena. No more delays.”  
__  
Anna and Alfonse led me out of the castle through an underground passageway located in the basement of the Order of Heroes headquarters. Anna had handed me Breidablik and a small sack full of orbs on the way down.  
“Don’t use these carelessly, we don’t have many right now,” she’d said, before pointing me at a rickety set of stairs.  
And, like an idiot, I’d silently taken the gun and the orbs and gone on my not-so-merry way down the steps into almost complete darkness, because at this point, I feared Anna more than I feared the unknown abyss in front of me. Alfonse had gone down ahead of me and I could hear his footsteps growing fainter as he ran farther down the tunnel.  
As we emerged into daylight from the pitch-black tunnels, my eyes burned. The entrance to the tunnel was disguised with thorny bushes, almost impossible to see with the naked eye if you weren’t looking. Hell, it’d probably be hard to find even while actively looking for it.  
“Her favorite field is this way,” Alfonse said, pointing to the left. Without another word, he drew his sword and rushed off into the trees.  
“He’s fast,” I said, astonished.  
“Not really,” Anna said. “Now go.”  
I followed. Very, very clumsily, but I followed. Tripping over roots and bushes and rocks the whole way, my arms and knees were cut to pieces by the time I caught up to him. Anna had stayed alongside me, axe brandished, ready to bash some skulls. Or, well, cut them off, which was more likely. By the time I caught up, Alfonse was standing at the edge of the field, staring out.  
To say that I was taken aback by how tall the wild plants were was an understatement. It was like looking out into a jungle. The grass was high above my head, higher than even Anna’s, and so dense that you probably couldn’t see your own hand in front of you if you stretched your arms out.  
“She picks flowers in this?” I asked, breathless.  
“She has an eye for flowers,” Alfonse said simply, then dove straight into the grass. “Sharena! Sharena? Can you hear me?”  
Anna frowned, scanning the edges of the field. Following her gaze, I saw a small white pouch abandoned at the base of a young ash tree.  
“Sharena?” she called.  
I looked up at the thick oak tree next to me. There was a sizeable, low-hanging branch about shoulder-height nearby. I groaned internally. Trees. Tick city. Did Zenith have Lyme disease? I sure hoped not as I clambered up the tree, careful of where I grabbed.  
I stopped about ten feet off the ground, mostly because if I went any higher I would either faint or not be able to climb back down. Or both. Probably both. Clutching the tree with all the strength in my tiny body, I looked out to the field.  
While it was subtle, you could see a thin path of trampled grass and flowers that started from our side of the field and exited out into the forest in almost an exactly a straight line. A small bundle of flowers had been tossed at the base of a tree at the edge of the clearing.  
“Alfonse, look over there!” I pointed.  
He rushed over and picked up the abandoned flowers.  
“This way!” He shouted.  
With a swing of his sword, he threw himself into the woods. Anna quickly followed, leaving me stranded in the tree.  
“Okay,” I said. “It’s only, like, ten feet. That’s not even a story tall. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this—”  
I could not do it. I fell out of the tree as I was hyping myself up to jump by slipping on a loose piece of bark.  
“Ugh…”  
I’d landed flat on my back. If I thought that I’d been sore before, I was sure to be in for a boatload of pain later. I couldn’t do anything but cringe on the ground with my eyes squeezed shut in a desperate attempt not to scream.  
“Hey, are you all right?”  
I pried my eyes open long enough to find a young woman crouched above me, looking down at me face-to-face. Her long blonde hair was worn is a loose ponytail and she wore a uniform almost identical to Alfonse’s. She’d plunged the tip of a lance into the ground at her side. Her large green eyes sparkled with curiosity as she looked me up and down and for the first time since arriving here, I realized that the t-shirt, sweatpants, and high-tops that I was wearing would be out of place in a world like this.  
“You must be Sharena,” I wheezed.  
“Wow! You know my name?” she giggled. “What world are you from?”  
“Not this one,” I said. “Anna and Alfonse are looking for you. He’s worried sick.”  
She let out a deep sigh. “He worries too much. I just came out here to pick flowers and make crowns out of them.”  
“Then why didn’t you answer when he rang the castle bell?” I asked.  
“I saw a kind of pegasus I didn’t recognize and ran after it,” she pouted. “A big white one with tiny brown spots! You don’t see those around here, so I was hoping that I could pet it. The pegasi around here are usually so friendly. I must’ve gone out so far that I couldn’t hear the bell, I swear!”  
I pushed myself up so that I was sitting.  
She plucked a few flowers and started weaving them together. “Oh well, they’ll come back eventually. Let’s just wait here for them. I’m sure I’ll get an earful when they find me. What’s your name? If you know Anna and Alfonse, you must be a friend.”  
“I’m Kiran.”  
“That’s nice name. I’m happy to meet you! Do you like flowers? I do. This kind is my favorite. It’s called the star of Zenith. It’s perfect for making flower crowns, it’s blooms are small but not too small, and it’s stems are thin, sturdy, and flexible!”  
“You’re just trying to avoid thinking about the lecture you’re about to get, aren’t you?” I asked.  
“… Yeah.”  
The bushes behind us rustled.  
“Alfonse, I found her!” I said.  
Sharena, for her part, didn’t look terribly pleased. She hopped to her feet, ripped the lance out of the ground, and with a flourish pointed it at the bush. I was starting to get the feeling that it wasn’t Alfonse. I forced myself to sit up, ready to scuttle backwards. The bush started to shake more violently.  
And from the bush hopped a rabbit.  
I sighed.  
“Get down!” Sharena shouted.  
In a flash she whacked me with the butt of her lance back into the ground and slashed forwards.  
She’d cut through the bush to get a clear look behind it.  
A young woman was standing there.  
A more apt description was that she was cowering there, her legs shaking a million miles per hour, clutching a thin spear. She wasn’t wearing anything like I’d seen on the Emblian soldier from before, but she wasn’t wearing anything like the Order of Heroes uniform either. Her short pink hair was full of twigs and leaves and her armor was scuffed.  
The poor girl’s large eyes somehow got larger.  
“A hero!” Sharena gasped. “How? Kiran, have you already summoned someone?”  
“No?” I hadn’t, right?  
“Pegasus!” The girl screamed, reaching her hand up to the sky.  
Sharena’s hand shot out. “Wait! Don’t leave. Where—”  
Before she could finish, a winged horse appeared from the sky and swept the girl off her feet. She circled around above us, still holding tight to her lance.  
“That pegasus armor…” Sharena muttered. “You’re from the World of Mystery, aren’t you?”  
“I-I’m sorry!” the girl wailed. “I-I’m bound by contract. I-If you don’t run away… I’ll fight you!”  
“You don’t have to,” Sharena begged. “Just tell me your name!”  
“It’s Est,” the girl said. “And I have to! By contract, I fight for Princess Veronica! Princess Minerva may be my mistress, but if she bends her knee to Embla, that’s it. So be it!”  
Est brandished her spear.  
Sharena gritted her teeth.  
“We could really use an archer right now,” she grumbled.  
Est dove down at us atop her pegasus.  
If I’d thought that Alfonse was fast, it was nothing compared to Est. Her steed was like a flash of white in front of my eyes. One second she’d been high in the sky above, the second she was lunging right at Sharena. The sound of their weapons clashing together was almost deafening and the impact sent Sharena crashing into the ground.  
Est retreated back into the air for a moment, contemplating. Her eyes darted around the field. Then, they settled on me. She grimaced, a strange look passing over her face. Confusion? Regret? I couldn’t tell.  
I fumbled with Breidablik, trying to shove an orb down its muzzle. Please work please work please work—  
And then she decided to dive at me.  
It was like time slowed down.  
The flap of the pegasus’ wings seems to make a shockwave in the air, hammering into my eardrums. Est was coming down at me in a spiral. The glint of the tip of her spear in the sunlight was blinding. My arms felt like lead as I lifted the gun. I knew in my head and in my heart that it was just an orb, that a person was supposed to appear in front of me, but everything in me screamed that it wasn’t right to point a weapon like this at someone. My finger slipped from the guard to the trigger, shaking hard. The gun shook in my hands. My heart was pounding so hard my chest hurt I was seeing double.  
I took a deep breath.  
I pulled the trigger.  
Or, at least I tried to.  
The sight of an axe spiraling through the air and glancing off her spear snapped me out of my trance.  
Est screamed. She tumbled out of the sky, the spear ripped from her hands. Her steed let out a pained whiney as she fell to the ground, unable to catch her fall.  
“Help! Princess Minerva, help!” Est screamed.  
Anna appeared at my side, glowering.  
“Where is your master?” Alfonse shouted. I nearly jumped out of my skin. He was suddenly there, right behind me.  
There was a flash of light and smoke between us, almost like a bomb went off, but there wasn’t any sound. Suddenly, a young girl was standing there. She wore a long black dress, with a crown like a halo circling behind her head. Her long, soft grey hair fell to her waist. In her hands, she held a large book that radiated a strange green glow.  
“Princess Veronica?” Est asked, breathless.  
“Take the pegasus and return to your princess,” the young girl said. “I can’t have my toys being broken.”  
With a snap of Veronica’s fingers, Est and her pegasus were gone.  
“What have you done?” Anna demanded.  
“I’ve forged contracts with your beloved heroes, of course,” Veronica said. “You leave the doors to other worlds wide open but refuse to use the heroes that reside there unless you summon them yourself. Do you think yourself noble?”  
“It’s heinous to take control of those heroes by force!” Anna snarled.  
“Force is the natural language of the world,” Veronica said smoothly. “You were foolish enough to leave the worlds unprotected. Did you think that the ceasefire my idiot father signed would stop me?”  
“Why?” Sharena begged. “What’s the point of all this?”  
“My blood calls for your death.”  
I stared at Veronica. She was completely serene standing there, a calm, calculating look on her face.  
“My blood calls for the death of the Askrans and the end to the opening of worlds. Just as my father’s did, and his father’s before him.”  
Veronica turned her attention to me. “You brought yourself a summoner to play with. How quaint.”  
“Stay away from Kiran,” Anna growled.  
Veronica giggled. “Says the woman who threw her weapon across the battlefield and is now defenseless. Tell me, why didn’t you just kill Est? Like how you killed my soldier earlier?”  
Anna sneered, speechless.  
“Oh, well. I supposed I’m outnumbered here. It was very kind of you to let me stand around and monologue, but I must take my leave.” Veronica smiled. “I have my heroes to tend to.”  
And just like that, she was gone.


	4. [NEW] I Summon Thee!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new Chapter One!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A redone chapter one! I didn't like how the original fic went after chapters two and three, so I'm starting from scratch. Because I spent the most time working on the original chapter one, its for the most part is how I wanted it to be. However, I felt like some of the pacing was awkward, so this is more of a 're-edit' than a 're-write', but there is a new scene at the end, so maybe it's a rewrite, technically? Instead of getting bogged down in the semantics, the new chapters two and three will be very different from their older counterparts. Instead of trying to pump it out week-by-week, I'm going to slow down a bit in order to improve quality and pacing going forward. 
> 
> In the meantime, I hope you enjoy 'So What If I Woke Up In Another World, I'm the Summoner'!

When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring down the wrong end of a gun.  
But it wasn’t like any gun I’d ever seen. For one, it was huge. An absolute unit. I’m pretty sure that it could cave my skull in if it wasn’t going to blast a hole the size of a fist into my chest. And second of all, this sucker was solid gold, with an ivory handle to boot. I mean, it was a cool looking gun, I’ll give it that much. Intricate, swirling detailing laced up and down the barrel and it glimmered in the sun so brightly it literally had its own halo. And, best of all, I had a clear view from the muzzle all the way down to the back of the barrel - and, at the very end of that barrel was a void.   
Because, of course this gun would have its own personal black hole hanging out inside it. It was this black so deep, so dark that my eyes hurt just looking at it. And it was really hard not to look at. The longer it forced my poor human eyes to gaze into its depths, the more my brain thought that it was seeing stars within it. As if there were galaxies floating around, the lights of their stars flickering in and out, the gases of the universes colliding in pinks and purples and blues and some ungodly colors that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. All of it was burned into my brain.  
The more I looked, the longer I looked the more I realized it wasn’t my eyes that were hurting, but my brain. A deep, throbbing ache. I forced my gaze up, but it was hard to ignore the whisper at the back of my brain that told me to keep staring into its depths.   
Survival instinct was something I was short on, it seems.   
And I was starting to question if the gun was the least of my concerns.   
You see, somebody had to be pointing this gun at me. Guns don’t just shoot themselves, for the most part.   
As the dust cleared at the world behind the weapon started to take shape, I got my first real look at who my potential assailant was.   
Behind this beast of a gun was a woman.  
Her shiny, curly, bright red hair was pulled up into a high ponytail. She was wearing what I could only guess was some kind of uniform—a stunning white tunic embroidered with gold at the edges laid over golden plate mail and a thick brown skirt. A pauldron shaped like a wing wrapped around her head from one shoulder to another. White feathers speckled with grey poked out of the pauldron out of the shoulder. She stood stiff, like she was still buckling from the recoil, her arms locked out in front of her. Her hands shook. Her eyes were pinched shut.  
The gun wobbled precariously in front of my face. I didn’t blame her. The thing looked like it weighed a good twenty pounds, minimum. A soft grey fog filled the air around us, pouring out of the muzzle of the gun. It seemed to glisten in the sunlight.  
As the fog cleared, it revealed that there was a particularly large and equally ornate axe stuck into the ground at her side.  
Perfect. She had a gun and an axe.  
I wasn’t liking my chances here.  
Suddenly, her eyes flashed open. They were a startling green.  
“It… worked?” She asked, ogling at the gun. “It worked!”  
She yanked the gun out of my face only to immediately turn it towards her own. She peered perilously down the barrel, holding it almost directly up to her eyes. I was all sorts of queasy just looking at her. It was safe to assume that no one had taught her gun safety.  
Scared to move, and without turning my head, I glanced around. We were in some kind of field, smack in the middle of a forest. And I, personally, was smack in the middle of some kind of stone circle. A shadow loomed over both of us. A statue? I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. My primary problem at the moment was the woman with an axe and a gun - I could understand one or the other, but honestly? Both were kind of overkill.   
I turned my attention to the open woods over her shoulder.   
I guessed that if I actually put some effort in and mad-dashed at the woods behind her, I might actually have something resembling a thirty percent chance of not getting axed on the first step forward. Or, you know, shot down by her actual hand-cannon.  
But, even if I ran, what good would that do? I had no idea where I was. I couldn’t even remember where I’d been before this. Or who I was before this. I could remember my name, but everything else was blank. Even so, I knew that I was very, very far from home.  
In other words, I was stuck between a woman with a gun and an axe and a hard place.  
I flinched. Suddenly, it was like every inch of my body burned with this residual ache, like I’d been ripped limb-from-limb and then put back together. Badly. With Elmer’s glue. My head was spinning. The sun burned my eyes.  
And it wasn’t because it was reflecting off of the most gold I’d (probably) ever seen in my life, either.  
“Where am I?” I choked out. My voice was barely a croak and it sounded (and felt) like I hadn’t spoken in a long, long time.  
The redhead pulled her face out of the gun, startled. I let out a deep, internal, sigh of relief.  
“I’m Anna, the current commander of the Order of Heroes—” She swept her arms out wide and spun in a circle. “And you’re in Askr. You must be the summoner I’ve read so much about!”  
I wracked my brain. Askr? What’s an Askr?  
“… You don’t have even the faintest idea of what I’m talking about, do you?”  
“Absolutely not,” I said.  
She let out a groan and put her head in her hands. “By the gods, what a mess.”  
“I’m sorry?” I said. And I genuinely meant it, despite my confusion. She had this downright beaten look on her face.  
“No, it’s not your fault. It’s just that this wasn’t listed in the manual. At all,” she sighed. “The summoner, a legendary hero brought to our world to save us all... is a clueless child”  
“I’m not sure about any of what you’re talking about, really. I’m not some kind of summoner, I’m just… Kiran. And wait, clueless child? That’s a bit strong isn’t it?”   
She ignored me. “Well, ‘Just Kiran’, I guess we’ve got a lot of catching up to do—hey, get down!”  
Before I could even process what she’d just said her hand snapped out and she grabbed me by the shoulder, throwing me face-first into the ground behind her. She tossed me the gun and with a flourish, whipped the axe out of the ground and parried the blow that was meant for my head.  
A man in battered black and green armor had appeared from the grass, brandishing a small hatchet, and was now standing in front of the absolute behemoth that had been casting the shadow over us. It was some kind of flat stone monument, laced with the same designs as the gun and at least fifteen feet tall, cracked and covered with moss. A perfectly circular hole was carved in its center between the carved branches of a tree. It didn’t look like a very stable structure - between the man with the axe and the statue, I wasn’t sure which would kill me first.   
The man standing in front of it didn’t seem to care that it looked like it would fall over any minute. No, he seemed much more interested in me. He idly spun the hatchet, barely more than a gardening tool. However, what it lacked in size it made up for in the sheer sharpness of its blade. It could’ve taken my head clean off my shoulders at the right angle.  
I sighed. Of course. Just my luck. Of course I’d get dragged into another world only to get killed five minutes in.  
However, it seemed like if Anna had any kind of say in it, I wouldn’t be dying quite yet.  
Anna glanced over her shoulder at me with a wink. “Just leave this to me, okay?”  
“Okay,” I wheezed.  
She shrugged a burlap bag off her shoulder and it landed at my feet. A strange glowing ball rolled out. The moment it touched the stone floor of the monument, it began to pulse. Without a second thought, almost like it was instinct, I reached out and rolled it closer.   
I wanted to slap myself. What was I doing?   
As I was contemplating my own apparent inability to care about my own well-being, Anna threw herself forward, axe in hand.   
The strange soldier started to brace himself. It was a stiff movement,  
almost robotic. I caught his eyes - they were lifeless, blank.   
She feinted to the left, he leaned in to swing. But it was too late - she spun on her heel and swung her axe in a wide arc down at his head. He barely blocked the blow. The handle of his hatchet snapped in half like it was made of chalk.  
The soldier stumbled back. He clutched at the end of the hatchet with the head still attached. With the helmet hanging low on his face, I couldn’t see the look in his eyes anymore, but his expression was almost… blank. Like he didn’t feel a thing at all.  
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled - something wasn’t right about this.   
As he was fumbling backwards, Anna swung her foot out, caught his leg, and yanked his weight out from underneath him.  
He hit the ground with a heavy thud.  
Before he could even roll over, Anna raised the axe high above her head.  
I looked on, both not understanding what I was looking at, and yet, knowing exactly what was about to happen next. I was horrified, petrified. I was hypnotized by the glint of her axe in the sun. The grace with which she held herself, the sleek and painfully sharp edge of her blade—my breath was caught in my throat.  
And with a quick swing, she brought the axe down.  
The blade sliced through his armor like it wasn’t even there. There was a flash of blood through the air. It splattered onto her white uniform, speckling it with bright red.  
As the man drew one last rattling breath, Anna stood over him. The broken hatchet laid at her feet. A shadow hung over her face. I couldn’t get a read on her expression.  
“See?” Anna asked. She turned back to look at me with a smile. “Nothing to worry about.”  
There were spots of blood on her cheek.  
“Y-yeah,” I stammered.  
I wasn’t sure how I felt. This was all happening way too fast. My stomach was trying to do backflips up my throat and out my mouth. But I did know one thing.  
I was very happy that Anna was not my enemy.  
She swung the axe over her shoulder and sauntered back over to me. She offered me her hand and for a moment, all I could do was just look at it. I took it and without even a hint of effort, she pulled me to my feet.  
In that moment, I realized just how tall she was. I felt so small next to her, she was almost a whole head taller than me, but I got the feeling that this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for me.  
She looked me up and down.   
“So, uh, what next?” I asked, suddenly very self-conscious.  
“I want you to take the Breidablik and fire that orb into the shrine.”   
“I’m going to need some context here.”  
“That there on the ground, the Breidablik? Didn’t anyone teach you anything?”  
She motioned at the massive gold gun.  
“Oh, if I knew about that, I think I’d remember it,” I said. “You want me to break the shrine or something?”  
“No.”   
I took a step back.   
Anna took a deep breath. “By shooting the orb at the shrine, we’ll be able to summon heroes to help us. Or rather, you’ll be able to summon them. That’s what I brought you here for. I can’t summon anything else now - it’s a miracle that I was even able to bring you here myself, honestly.”  
“O-oh...”   
“Are you starting to put it together now?” Anna asked.  
“Not really.”  
She slumped over in defeat.  
“But, if you give me some time to process all of... this.” I gestured to the field, the axe, the gun, the dead soldier. “I might be able to, eventually. Anna, I can barely remember my own name. Even if I’d had any kind of training, I’m not about to remember it any time soon. Please understand that I’m more than a little scrambled right now.”  
Anna looked at me, pensive.  
“Please, just give me some time. That’s all I need right now,” I said. No, begged.  
“I’m afraid that time is something that we’re running out of,” Anna said. “This kingdom is in danger, Kiran. And unfortunately, whether you like it or not, Breidablik brought you to me.”  
A stiff breeze rustled the grass around us. I couldn’t find anything to say. Nothing to snark, nothing to argue. In that moment, our eyes were locked in a stalemate.   
“I can’t walk away from this, can I?” I asked.  
“I can’t just return you and ask for another summoner, if that’s what you really mean,” Anna said.   
“I got the feeling that you might say something like that,” I said.  
I reached down and gathered the gun - no, Breidablik - and the orb into my arms. For a moment, I fumbled, trying desperately to combine the two. Anna looked on, a disconcerted expression on her face.   
I really wanted to say ‘don’t look at me like that’ but at this point, I’m pretty sure I didn’t have the right to ask that of her. After all, she’d summoned me in the desperate hope that I’d be some kind of experienced soldier of sorts, only to wind up with a lanky teenager with a severe lack of survival instincts.   
Was I accepting this all too easily? Maybe. But what else did I have? I barely even had a name.   
After some struggling (that was a lie, a whole lot of struggling, more like) I managed to successfully make the orb fit into the mouth of Breidablik.  
“It really isn’t that hard,” Anna noted.  
“I have my mind in a lot of places right now,” I said.   
I leveled the gun in front of me. It took some effort - my arms ached after a couple of seconds and suddenly it became a whole-body effort to keep myself upright.   
And yet, somehow, I managed to hold it still enough to pull the trigger and hit the target.   
There was a gust of smoke that exploded from the shrine. As it blew past my face, I could’ve sworn that it glittered in the light like before.   
And then, just like that, a person’s silhouette stood in front of me. It looked just like the inside of the Breidablik - a portion of space and time had been ripped into a human-shaped form. It swallowed the light around us. In that moment, a flicker of lights and colors that couldn’t possibly comprehended by human eyes appeared from within.   
Just as quickly, their form solidified. A blink of the eye and it had gone from void to a flesh-and-bone human.   
And he looked fucking pissed.  
“Where the hell am I?” he demanded.  
Anna chuckled. “It’s good to see that not everyone summoned by the Breidablik is so... lethargic.”  
And in that moment, I, too, felt the sudden urge to stick my face down into the barrel of the gun.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, my first fanfic! I'm so excited! This is only the first part of several to come in this series, so look for updates on Sundays! Not necessarily every Sunday, but Sundays. Mostly.


End file.
